Nightmares
by StoryDiva
Summary: Set after season one finale. Joan tries to figure out who she is after everything falls apart. Written for 15minuteficlets word challenge and has mild spoilers through finale.


**Title: ** Nightmares - A Vignette 

**Author: **storydivagirl [at] hotmail [com] 

**Disclaimer: ** not mine. not mine at all. 

**A/N:** Written for the 15minuteficlet challenge at Livejournal. Also archived on my website ). Feedback always appreciated. 

**_Word # 62 - Bloody_**

In her dreams, there was always a lot of blood. It poured out of the ceilings, flowed in the rivers, and engulfed her within its coppery thickness. She was also always alone. She would scream for her parents, her brothers, Adam...no one came to rescue her and no one seemed to care. 

Joan awoke with a start. The bloody dreams, as she had coined them, were starting to make her crazy, and she swore it all went back to the stupid pills. All these medications that were supposed to make her better, make the Lyme Disease go dormant (not cured, no, leave it to her to catch an incurable disease), and make life so much moreshe hated it. She hated the way her mother would gently nudge her in the side and then motion to the row of pills. She hated the way her father would kiss the top of her head like she needed to be handled. And she really hated that Luke took to treating like his own personal scientific study. 

She rolled over and glanced at the clock. Two am. Well, she made it an extra hour tonight before the recurring nightmares started. 

She couldn't help but wonder if this was the devil at work, but that thought quickly passed. She'd remind herself: _you weren't speaking to God. You were sick, now you're not. _If there was no god in her life, there couldn't be a devil either, right? Wasn't it all a part of that whole yin-yang thing Luke rambled on and on about? 

She sat up in bed and opened her windows. A very slight breeze came by and she basked in its coolness. The heat and humidity were stifling and her parents (her cheapskate father actually) was against air conditioning, going on at length about how he grew up without it and he turned out fine. She stared up at the sky, stars scattered across the black backdrop, and thought about how she had gotten to this point. 

It was weird because in everyone else's mind this year had been a bad one for her with her scatterbrained behavior and constant interest flux, but it had felt natural, easyand safe. She had accomplished more in nine months than she had in her sixteen years on earth and, for the first time, she felt connected to something much bigger than her. She had faith and she believed that anything was possible. 

Now she didn't. All those things that only weeks ago she had told Adam were tangible and real and feasible...it was lies. She had lied to him, but worse, she had lied to herself. She had managed to get so caught up in all these missions of hers, all the potential good, and ripples she was creating that she never saw it coming. Never saw the ceiling drop out from over her and pulverize her when it fell. 

What the hell was she going to do now? What did she have going for her? She wasn't all that smart or mister personality like her brothers. She wasn't good at things the way Grace and Adam were. The one thing she had was that she could talk to God, that he had chosen her, trusted her, to change things for the better. And she felt special because of it. 

It was gone. All of it. 

Who was she? 

Did it even matter now? 

Where was God when she needed him? She had always done what he wanted-why had he left her now when she felt soalone. 

It was strange to say that word. Alone. It inferred that she was all by herself and technically, the problem was that she was never alone. There was always someone around her, always someone there with their own annoying brand of optimism (even Grace, though she would die if that got out). Was it possible to be surrounded by people who loved you and still feel lonely? Because she did. 

Those dreams, filled with blood and horrible images, drove that emptiness home and she wished, more than anything, that someone would make sense of all of this for her. 

She knew that wasn't going to happen though. So she closed the window, laid back down, and forced her eyes shut until she finally drifted back off. 

_{fin}_


End file.
